THE PURITY OF SNOW AND VIOLETS



Or you could leave that towering sex slaughterhouse, roll
Up the goats and condors, the penciled slopes of two

   Human hips,
Ignore the sawdust falling out of everyone's spinning

Eyes. In the fields large running birds
With hairless heads ignore the hourly sirens and Asylum Lake

   Burns. This
Isn't the way it was supposed to happen,

Of course. A walk down some railroad tracks, pollen
of weeds and the aspens, a howl of a train in an unimaginable

   Distance. A
Woman in a bath kept singing while it grew darker and louder

Outside, one of your molars coming away white in
Between aching fingers, its root like spiraling vines.

FIRST SNOW. FIRST SOUL 

It wasn’t so much a puppet—
They were dead in the sewers hung up along

    The curbs—
Or even a big wedge of corned beef.

I picked up twenty knives before I found one heavy enough
Because the heart’s gnarled meat—you know this, right?

   The flowers
Blooming along the windows in the elementary school

Blistered like soft blouses . . .
Man looked at herself in a mirror and that was that

   The tape
Looped back over and over again unlike the tracks of animals

ROOM FOR RENT


The house is a cove, the house
is a cove, the house is a cove, the

   House is
A city, a stone's throw, a kindly

Regurgitation, I'll admit
Where have all the bellboys gone, off with

   The sluts
Yes we were in love with that kind of magic

Are you distant or something
The rain connects us with the water, the sadness

   Connects with
Can't you see the sun on the horizon bleeding

All over the surface of the lake
Where the loons swim in it laughing

CHEAP ENTERTAINMENT

                                    ("as I sd to my
                                            friend, because I am
                                            always talking")

On the lower register, despotism--
I'm as free to be a bird as the next swan.

Literally picnicking on hindquarters,
we spent summers soaking cool in a blush

of blood. The jugular, the shit sack,
my David Bowie albums. "Just because

dental floss is skinny doesn't mean you
didn't just litter." You're kidding me . . .

You're cooking in it, two cups full of freedom
and the fiery (angry) inside of a bean, the face

that stares and stares, long bone of a nose, wet
eyes--the draining lungs of an empiricist who

got the game all wrong, makes soup out of what-
ever is handy in the fridge (I've got this leftover bacon),

then checks out her "projection" in the side view mirror--
I think we're all just panting dogs.

DAY BRAIN

I had that face
On again--G-
force, strapped in. The

Moon is private
Property, the
Floats there having


Been abandoned,
I thought to my-
Self, rattling in

My cage, my face
Fluttering, my
Mind still moving

At the speed of
Light, para-
Sites feeding on

Other Parasites,
I didn't want
to go that fast.

THE NECKLACE MADE OF LITTLE CLOCKS

It was back in the bowels of
The place. I left with a wide hockey stick,

   A goalie's
Responsibility. Battalions of these things,

Webbed against the ice, flooded the hallways,
left all the curtains in tatters. There were a few

   Nude models
Waiting to draw a wage, drawings of white socks mostly,

Some tendons in the thigh and ass, the brown thrasher
That strutted from easel to easel, screeching, or flapping

   Its wings.
You have to understand these were the usual habits,

The jerking and sucking, the standing in the basement all night
with nothing on, the huge heat vents blasting overhead.

THE COYOTES

There was a way to think, what
Disappears, what is destroyed, what

   Splits apart.
We came out and found a large circumference,

A stone that crunched up clothes and bones
When we rolled it aside to claim what had been ours, had been

   Taken away.
We trotted along the cold turning road.

Easter had never been like this, bridges rising out of
The dunes, nothing to go back to, water collapsing into

   Deeper water.
We continued to believe in this, the law of animals

Who don't look back, the sun in the sky gold as the yolk
Of an egg, her face looking almost human in the evening light.

POEM ABOUT SAFETY

A tablet, Tylenol 3, beef jerky,
you open your mouth and a poisonous

   Fog moves
In. Until I ran out. Now I will dance

Forever in the leaves, nickels shining
On my eyelids. String, wood, and paper.

   A bird
Pops out of the clock. I want you to use this key

So I can't go anywhere. Another virus, you know,
Is moving up the driveway, another standing ovation

   With a female
Name. Steel gravity. Go stand up over there and rain.

A HAIRCUT

Velvet and fur, or sometimes I'd come right
Out of the water, walking like a black statue,

   Blue eels
Squirming on the swept clean floor. The prayer'd

Go sideways into light. It was because of the
Nozzle jets, head back, warm water rinsing my hair

   Until I was
Just so happy. A pipefitter comes, removes

Splinters. I could get up now. Because that's
What you do with parents who refuse to touch anyone.

THERE WON'T BE FLOWERS

Opposite corpses, I mean
A snapshot, a beautiful fence,

A beautiful face.
My own drum cracked a little,

My heartbeat, put your hand here
And don't move it. The flag blew in the offshore

Breeze. The
Slenderest of legs, crossing where the rain is,

Asphalt hot and mixed with feathers, orange spray,
A garden beginning to bloom there, her eyes closing,

I witnessed
A sudden birth, blood connecting us at the lips.

MY CALENDAR FOR DECEMBER


Yeah, I know. The tricycle
paddles over the hole in the sun.

   The soup
Is too cold. Examine the significance.

If you burn an ant with a magnifying
Glass guess what? Take a Magic

     Marker and
Draw a circle around the womb

As you remember it. As you were beaten falling,
And laughing, as you were thrusting, as

   The snowfall
Increased, as the human diagram dried in the sun.

CONFESSION

There aren't that many voices--storm
Door. All the windows slammed shut,

   Japanese beetles.
I whispered in her ear, silverfish in

The wiring. The result was music,
Mechanical, like a crop duster buzzing

   Inside a jar.
I moved to the rear and placed my hands

On the stirrups, little hammer in her
Eyes. We lived so long there, dirty in

   The leaves.
It was storming when I wrote the letter.

THE MUTE BUTTON

The pause is what fills the bottom
Of the stairwell. The rest of the windows

   Are paintings.
Like a train swallowing a beam of

Shadowy air. My story ends and hers
Begins. I sigh, press "play." Usually no one

   Is watching.
A cottonwood splits. Half of it silently

Crashes to the ground. When the neighbors
Wake up the house across the street looks empty,

   Swallows
Flying in and out of the windows.

NEUROLOGY


Runaway, ghosts, when they
Swallow they hurt the earth.

   The puppet's
Eyes were lead. He lived for

Solace, alone, in a box, but he
Had a heart. There wasn't a soul left

   In that house
With me. One time I found my cup of

Coffee outside, sitting in the sunshine,
Some dirt sprinkled on top.

PERSON

Don't hurt me
don't and endless
earth seismic with it

thinking in
to yourself's own shelf of
sun room vacation

close my eyes?
I walked away
like it meant little 

I stay here
I tried roaming the countryside
born as meat meets

explicit--nothing like that can
burn down my body with
your body

your kisses'll bring me
nursed and abandoned
will bring me

like you meant to communicate
to say (to say)
I'm not going to just suffer

a single mallard on the pond again
Jesus H
I breathe the breath (I say)

the breath will not exactly
matter
which is not to say it won't

it won't even be
a thought
anymore

I HAVEN'T YET TAKEN NOVEMBER PHOTOS


It's late on a
Saturday. Sports
ensues--everyone and their cousin

are at the sports bar.

The romance was in the burning of leaves,
the life after the first wasted life, trying to make money,
but now the smoke just stinks up my foyer . . .

Out in the yard, rakes, sunglasses,
a familiarity you can see, or misprision, deck shoe
happiness and a cup full of cigarettes . . .

I just happen to have a pack under my car seat.

Because I'm a survivor.

I bought a little jar of olives for tonight and I do plan to use them.

Is it average to tolerate love

then crawl around in the new snow saying Where is everyone going?

THE FISH

                        (Mona Lake Channel)

Error.  No interrupting tears
came to its eyes, forehead like

oil, but there was the cup of brilliant
water it gargled on . . . Our

alcohol was nothing like
candy. Hook that could swing a

wrecking ball was burped out sideways
under the moon, and I felt a chill

on one side of my face and forearms.
Give me your knife, Hawkins said,

but I was confusing my
swallows and bats again, the

water fluctuating with wings
and music. Later I'd kill some

other things. It made me read
a lot more books. The stars speak

for those who have no voice, an
old wino might have said but

didn't. Four doves in a pine had
rearranged. I circled a line

of words on a page. A long groan
accompanied a flood of water

that pulsed out of the breathing muscle,
its lips like sculpted plastic . . . Some

stones turned dark and stank. Never mind.
A cicada had turned into a monster.

RIOTOUS HUNGER

Prescriptive, a new face, wasteful
but a blast. The torn attic books through

town. The house squats
or it's relaxed. It's way over there now,

screens ripped, glass blowing . . .
Cartons of cigarettes, catalogues, old flattened

receipts. Nothing lives better, nothing
living, looking back, the tips of buds in

picture books, ice dams . . . the heart's
on a table--we can't help it--eating cubes of

horseradish, wanting what it wants, the face was
erased, said the headline in the news, he went

to bed and never got up. Flash flood, it all came
out around his gas mask, clapped back like a dream . . .

THE CODEX

                   (for Alice Notley)


Medea--vase painters
all--you stand with your hands--

don't pose--experience your breath--
breathe it into the--codex--I'm--

I'm opposite, shamed, ceiling full of books--
but--the sound

as it flies
from the body--coughing--

like something coughing/crying--
blocked windows--

or laughing--a cough or a laugh--
a laugh--the soft--skin

I go--imagine some features--
topographical map of--

throws it--shame in the sweat--
throws it--out--the expression on the face--

gladness--it barks under light--
she coughs, they both cough, laughing--face lit

by face--a second laugh--everyone else--eyes--
open     eyes

STATIONARY

Lecture me
a person listens

doesn't learn.
She trusts you . . .

And your favorite drink
this morning is . . .

Memory is a
Moog synthesizer

Your body is
a liar?

RUPTURE OF THE FRAME

I'm not tensed against the spirit,
the word

razor-gutted,

like laying pipe, the fungus carnival masked up in a lab

Pick a corner, damp

oh your fescue, your eyes writhing, exhale and go

I've signed a new contract, for gems such as you leak--

Lynx diamonds--

Jewelers circle the brains of hammerhead sharks

I'm not losing what I've learned
that deeply in the ocean softened

by sawdust and milk . . .

My resolute, I'm the pivot in your heart (the birds rotate)

your hand, my veins, consume these functions . . .

THE LAST WEATHER VANES


I remember that awakening: darkness spoke the gallery

Dust from under a side-door,
mouthpiece and a hole in a football helmet

There were only trucks--mattress, kissing, bowl of water for the dog

The football field wasn't a church

You could see it though, downhill from the burning chairs
and other people's girlfriends, the guitar cases leaning like they
might never open again

Girls with their blood, their new smell, like lilacs on horseback

There was a lot of hot sand that August

The rotating fan turned from side to side all summer

In the morning I looked out the window--
I thought I could probably wait another half an hour
and then go knock on the door

Another woodlot between practice and someone
wandering toward the fresh burned cornfield

a soft shoulder

Two coyotes were running away

EFFECTUAL STARS


Anguish at twilight,
caffeinated, they're all
Saints out here. Grab your love

in a cup. Or follow:
my horns are fine. It's my
eyes that are ten shades past

thirsty, only I get
flashing car windows. Mouths
open behind them, wine

dreaming tears onto the
dashboard. A waist that is
soft as a rabbit's ears,

please, until winter. A face
I cannot leave. A kiss
is like the weeping of

this grass under snow. Her
name? Interpretation
of mind, green, like your eyes . . .

I'M SERIOUS

The drugs weren't
very good. A luminous
film about the after

life? I don't think
I'm buying it. I don't
have to be high to

get we're all being
screwed these days.
And people are

delicate. But stronger
than you might
imagine. Of course you

don't need me to tell
you that. I'm serious.
I never expected you

to read this poem. But
since you're here can
you just give me a hug?

THE CREASE


Why's he saying that, up late, half paragraph, coward . . .

My only afternoon and you won't talk now--bear right here

Sometimes I can't move

Watching Saturday Night Live on the floor

This is how I split the world

Hardware love, stones near the dirty fence, Emperor
Claudius, my sight dimming, another light-year in the
steel, the limp, pressing 200 pounds . . .

It snowed on November 11

All over the salvage yard, new art history

Walking through the grass behind the school

I looked inside a blue car, vibrations of white light . . .

I will wait

I will watch the blizzard

Make you some coffee

The flocks of blackbirds were pulling apart all day--coming
   together,
then pulling apart--leaving to go home again

CHANNELING

The wide room is
a memory. Bark, rough
as it might be against
one's back, was visible

from the patio, from which
I'd stay hidden. The
books had caused silence,
damp and crosshatched

in a box marked dishes.
She breathed across the street
with her wrists cut. I crossed
some bad wires over her,

blue phlox, riding in
a horse drawn carriage,
the smell of cigarettes running
wild amidst the peat moss

and trout lilies . . .Dark green
though now, mold and
a fawn light, the basement a
traveling ark, time sunk

deep in the earth. I
sometimes thought of the graves,
a friendly communion
with all the white calm, sea foam

come inland . . . like music
filtering through the screen, spring
showers, a card in a blue
envelope,

the roses in water
she showed me
one time, blushing. They
had been a gift from her father.

THE HILL


Nonfigurative, he
said, as if the night sky
itself were his weapon.

Stars sank, and the lake stalled
and she could smell in the
cold his sweat, the mist coating

the grass, one hand on
his calf. The muscle would
sometimes suffer, trembling

to a knot. He moved through
his own cloud of smoke. Day
eating day, he sighed, and

the lactic acid re-
leased and he had to pre-
tend he was stable. The

following day it rained
and then the drops turned to
ice, and then his hands grew

restless in the weeds, the
blue water dimmed in his
mind again—but he was

sliding through new snow. From
a distance she heard the
pressure in the joists, like

waking on an invisible
boat at night, the tightness
of the heavy wood float-

ing on water . . . Thank God
it wasn't a dream, was
what he rose up thinking,

the sound of paint brushes
on the wall, shoes tumbling
into a corner. The

lights bowed out again. He
wasn't sure but he thought
he might be better off

walking away from some
highway, beech bark and
the humming of yellow

jackets asleep inside
their paper nests in the
snow. He made a fist. He

could feel one eye alive
inside its cooling socket.
The sun keened behind a hill . . .

REALITY, ITSELF


I begin to feel this, count
on my fingers, the new dead,
the pages, the newly

greatest, every simple, from
some dumb . . . Suffice it
to say they're misunderstood

but couldn't care less; they've
grown (changed) past permissions,
art school, worry, and ethics . . .